Gods Behaving Badly came out a few years ago and was quite a hit. I can see why — it’s just fun. And very well written and concise (the epub is only 239 pages). I enjoy stories of gods losing their powers and living among us, like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, so if you enjoy that kind of plot, too, and haven’t read Gods Behaving Badly yet I recommend you try it. A nice summer/beach read.

From Marie Phillips, hailed by the Guardian Unlimited website as a “hot author” destined to “break through” in 2007, comes a highly entertaining novel set in North London, where the Greek gods have been living in obscurity since the seventeenth century.

Being immortal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Life’s hard for a Greek god in the twenty-first century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn’t respect you, and you’re stuck in a dilapidated hovel in North London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there’s no way out… until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives and turn the world upside down.

Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original novel that satisfies the head and the heart.

There are some interesting publishing developments today, and I have Thoughts:

1) Amazon announced the launch of Kindle Worlds, a licensed publishing program for fanfic. Writers can sell their fanfic based on properties that Amazon has licensed (including Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl so far), and the “World Licensor” also gets a cut.

I have many thoughts on this but haven’t decided if Kindle Worlds and monetizing fanfic is good, bad or neutral. Pros include the licensing, so the original copyright holder gets a cut unlike fanfics that have been pulled-to-publish. Cons include some of the terms that writers should pay attention to, including “We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you.”

Mainly right now, I’m just curious how it will play out. There is also a lot of fanfic free online, so I’ll be interested to see how many fanfic readers are willing to pay for fanfic from unknown authors (with the exception of the fanfic superstars who have already built up large audiences). I’m also very curious about the “guidelines” Amazon mentions that accepted works have to adhere to. How stringent will they be? How will submissions be vetted? Will individual authors license their stories for Worlds — as opposed to corporately-owned properties, like Vampire Diaries — and how will their guidelines and process differ?

2) Penguin is the last publisher to settle ebook pricing class-action suit and has to pay to pay the most, over $90 Million.

3) The New York Times is makes changes to their bestseller lists: ebook list will only be published online, and they’ve stopped including cover prices on the lists.

The cover price thing makes sense to me since hardly anyone actually pays the cover price anymore. It will be harder to identify those 99-cent or cheap ebooks that make the list, too, which makes me wonder how that will affect people’s impression of these books. Will they be taken a bit more seriously if people don’t know they’re super cheap? Will it make self-publishing seem less of a presence?

I do NOT like that the ebook list is being cut from the printed newspaper, though. It seems like a step backwards in separating ebooks from “real” (ugh) printed books.

frustrated-help-desk:

Gif blog for tech support! I sent this to my Help Desk husband.

lifenebooks:

And what it’s actually like:

And sometimes:

Story of my life.